Page 12 of Fallen Dove (Fallen Lords MC 2nd Gen #1)

Adley

Half past nine and my feet already felt like they were two sizes too small for my shoes. Friday had that warm buzz of people staking out tables before the real rush, TVs flipping through pregame shows, and the jukebox waking up one dollar at a time. I topped off a pitcher at the bar when Penny breezed up like a gust of glittery wind.

“Come on,”

she said, grabbing my hand and tugging.

“Mason says we should take our break right now with there being a lull. Bay said she’ll watch our tables.”

I wasn’t going to argue with the word break. I set the pitcher down for Bay with a grateful nod and let Penny tow me toward the back hall.

Calla was coming in through the service door.

“Still slow?”

she asked.

Penny bugged her eyes out and pressed a finger to her lips.

“Don’t say that word. You’ll jinx us.”

Calla barked a laugh.

“Girl, we’ve been working here for a while now. We know it’s inevitable that Friday and Saturday nights are going to kick our ass.”

“Yeah, but we don’t need to invite it,”

Penny said, even as her grin said she knew exactly what was coming.

Calla tipped her chin toward the front.

“Also, I heard my mom talking about the aunts coming in for another round of party planning.”

“Let’s just hope the captain doesn’t come with them,”

I laughed.

Calla groaned dramatically.

“Dear Lord, please don’t let my mom get that drunk. I will cut her off myself if my dad doesn’t.”

She vanished through the swing door. Penny and I pushed out the back exit into the narrow yard between the building and the alley. The air bit pleasantly at my hot cheeks; cool Wisconsin night with that clean farm smell you can’t bottle no matter how many fancy candles try.

It was instantly quieter out here, like someone put a lid over the roar of the Social Club and left us with crickets, and the distant thump of a bass from a passing car,

I tipped my head back and stared at the slice of sky framed by brick. The stars in Weston looked bigger than they had any right to, sharp pinpricks scattered across velvet skies.

“Do you miss Chicago?”

Penny asked.

I dropped my chin and side-eyed her.

“Were you reading my mind?”

She snorted.

“No. Were you thinking about Chicago?”

“Sort of.”

I leaned my shoulder against the rough brick.

“I was thinking how life is so much quieter here. Slower.”

Penny wrinkled her nose.

“I think you mean boring. I would kill to be anywhere but here.”

That surprised me and didn’t, all at once. I’d thought that exact thought once.

“Weston isn’t all bad, Penny,”

I said, gentler than the automatic defense sounded in my head.

She sighed and scuffed the toe of her boot against a crack in the concrete.

“Yeah, well, you’ve been out of this town. I’m pretty sure my parents would have a coronary if I told them I was leaving.”

I laughed.

“I think they might take the news better if you had a plan. Not just ‘hey, peace out.’”

“Okay, fair.”

Her mouth twisted.

“It’s not even just leaving. It’s… I feel so surrounded all the time.”

“Surrounded?” I echoed.

She nodded, eyes on the dark alley.

“I know it sounds dumb, but there’s always someone there. I can’t go to the store or the gas station without getting a text from Ender saying he saw me, or my dad telling me I can’t be out late unless I’ve got one of the guys with me.”

I got it. I really did. I was thirty-one and Dad was still a human tripwire for my comings and goings. When Mason dropped me off after my breakdown, I could feel the questions stacked behind Dad’s eyes like ammo.

“When you’re related to half the town,”

I said.

“I guess you never really are alone.”

“That’s the thing.”

She blew out a breath and hugged herself.

“I love the club. I love my family. I do. But maybe I just need a break from everyone knowing where I am all the time.”

I nodded.

“A break’s not a bad idea.”

Penny’s eyes lit like I’d handed her a sparkler.

“We should do a girls’ weekend in Chicago. Just the cousins.”

We weren’t technically related, but cousins were the only word that made sense for the way we were raised.

“You couldn’t have come up with this idea when I was living in Chicago?”

I teased.

“Now we’re going to have to get a hotel.”

“As if your old apartment could’ve fit all of us,”

she shot back, and she wasn’t wrong. My “bedroom”

had been a mattress shoved behind a curtain.

“Oh my God, this is going to be great.”

Penny started talking faster, already planning.

“You, me, Calla, Bell, and Clove!”

“What about Eden?” I asked.

Penny wrinkled her nose.

“I mean, she can come, but she’s eighteen. Can she even get into bars with us in Chicago?”

I grimaced. She had a point. Eden would spend the weekend holding purses in lobbies.

“Why don’t we just stay here and have a girls’ night?”

I offered, knowing I sounded like a grandma and not caring.

“Nope.”

She popped the p.

“We are going to Chicago. I’m going to tell Mason he needs to figure out which weekend he can handle the Social Club without us.”

She nodded, decision made.

“And soon.”

“Penny-”

I reached for her sleeve, but she was already spinning back toward the door.

“This is happening!”

she sang, flinging the door open and disappearing into the noise.

“Awesome,”

I muttered to the night.

“This was not how I thought my break was going to go.”

I pressed my head back against the wall and looked up again. The stars wobbled with a thin spill of clouds. Somewhere far off, a semi grumbled along the highway. I liked that Weston’s silence had layers. Chicago’s quiet never did; it flickered between on and off like a light switch.

A car eased into the alley to my right, tires whispering over grit. I turned my head. The sedan’s windows were blacked out enough to block out the light. It didn’t stop or slow, just rolled past kept going toward the street. Still, a chill feathered down my spine, ridiculous and gut-deep at once. Nothing to see, Adley. People cut through here every night.

Even so, I slid my hand to the handle and slipped back inside, and turned to keep the car in my peripheral until the door shut.

The club had gained ten decibels in the five minutes I’d been gone. Tables that were half-full were now mostly-full. A line had formed at the hostess stand that we absolutely don’t have but pretend we do with a ”give us a second!”

smile. I scanned for Penny and found her at the bar, all hand gestures and eyebrows, talking at Mason like she was pitching a reality show.

From Mason’s scowl, he was not buying.

“Then I quit!”

Penny announced, loud enough to corkscrew through the noise.

Half the bar looked over. My stomach dropped.

“What in the hell is going on down there?”

Thorn asked, materializing at my elbow with a bar towel over his shoulder.

“Uh…”

I winced.

“Penny wants to do a girls’ weekend trip to Chicago with just the cousins. I’m assuming Mason is not loving the idea of all of his waitresses taking the same weekend off.”

Thorn snorted.

“Yeah, I bet he’s shutting that shit down.”

“I’m serious, Mason!”

Penny said, voice bright and furious.

“We deserve to get away once in our lives without the entire town chaperoning us.”

That needed to stop before it turned into a resignation letter written on a cocktail napkin. I made my way down the bar, past Bay sliding shots onto a tray and a guy asking if he could bring his own darts (no). I pasted on my brightest everything is fine smile.

“What’s going on?”

I called, cheerier than I felt.

Penny folded her arms tight across her chest.

“Mason said no.”

Straight as an arrow.

“He said we all can’t take off the same weekend.”

“I said no to you telling me that next weekend,”

Mason corrected, voice even but strained.

“you, Calla, Eden, Bell, Clove, Adley, and Bay are going to Chicago and that I should just shut the club down.”

My eyes bugged.

“Whoa, whoa.”

That was not the ask I thought Penny was going to make.

“Next weekend? Pen, that’s-”

“Spontaneous,”

Penny snapped, chin up.

“That’s what a break is, Adley. We pick a weekend and go.”

“Next weekend is the Brewers home stand and a darts tournament,”

Mason said, jaw ticking.

“I’m already short a barback and Arlo’s on security solo because Oliver’s pulling prospect duty with Fox. I can’t lose the entire front-of-house.”

“You won’t lose the entire front-of-house,”

Penny shot back.

“You’ll do what you always do, stare at people until they move faster.”

“Pen.”

I touched her elbow, kept my voice calm.

“Let’s not light everything on fire to keep warm, okay?”

She cut me a sideways look, a crack in the armor.

“I want to go. But we can’t disappear on him next weekend. Not all of us.”

We could give Mason more notice than a week.

Mason’s gaze flicked to me, quick, something like gratitude flashing before the stone slid back in place.

Penny huffed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling like she was asking the bartender in the sky for patience.

“I just, if we don’t go, it’s never going to happen.”

“It can happen,”

I said, squeezing her arm.

“We’ll make it happen. But we need to pick a weekend that doesn’t blow a hole in the bow of the Social Club.”

Penny’s mouth opened, closed. She looked down the bar at Bay, who was very conspicuously not eavesdropping while absolutely eavesdropping, then back at Mason.

“Three weekends from now?”

she tried, palms up like she was bartering for a truce.

“We leave Friday morning, back Sunday night. You still have Calla and Bay Saturday because-”

She stopped, scrambled, then muttered.

“Okay, fine, you don’t have Calla and Bay because they are coming with us.”

Mason rubbed a hand over his jaw, thinking.

“That’s the charity pool tournament.”

“Which brings in forty-five-year-old dads who tip in quarters and order water like it’s a personality,”

Penny said.

Thorn snorted. Mason didn’t smile, but the tightness around his eyes eased half a notch.

“Four weekends,”

I offered.

“After Eden’s graduation party. Plus, that weekend the football team has their first out of town game so half of the town will be gone.”

Penny looked at me.

“You’re… right.”

She sounded surprised, then recovered.

“You are right. See?”

She jabbed a finger at Mason like she’d proven a theorem.

“We’re being reasonable.”

“I’m hearing more reasonable,”

Mason said.

“Not reasonable.”

“Can you check the calendar?”

I asked him because he kept the entire club’s life in his head like a Rain Man of beer and ball games.

“If there’s a weekend you can spare us, we’ll take that one if four from now doesn’t work.”

Penny threw her hands.

“Any weekend. Just not never.”

Mason exhaled, glanced at the bar, then at the floor, thinking through the math like he always did: security coverage, kitchen staffing, who he could swap on short notice without killing anyone. Finally, he nodded once.

“I’ll look,”

he said.

“If there’s a weekend I can make work, I’ll make it work. But it won’t be next weekend.”

Penny stared at him like she was looking for fine print.

“You promise you’ll try?”

“I said I’ll look.”

His voice went dry.

“If I say yes, it’s yes. I don’t say it unless I mean it.”

That landed. Penny’s shoulders lost two inches of altitude. She blew out a breath and let her arms drop to her sides. “Okay.”

She cut a sheepish look at me, then back to Mason.

“Okay. And I… don’t quit.”

“Good,”

Mason said, turning away to grab a towel with more relief than he was ever going to show.

“Because you’re on the floor in thirty seconds.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst,”

Penny grumbled, which in Penny meant fine, thank you. She leaned into me and whispered.

“Fourth weekend or I’m chaining myself to the jukebox.”

“Please don’t,”

Bay said, sliding past with a tray.

“It already shocks me sometimes.”

Penny stuck out her tongue at her and darted down the lane toward a table waving for refills. I took a step to follow and felt Mason’s gaze brush my cheek like a palm.

“Thanks,”

he said quietly, eyes on the taps.

“Don’t thank me yet,”

I murmured.

“You might still be stuck with a skeleton crew if we rope Bell into this.”

“Bell is already roped into this,”

Bell announced, appearing from nowhere like a pixie with a death wish.

“Also, did I hear nachos? If there are nachos involved, then I am in.”

I patted her shoulder.

“Have you ever thought about getting your hearing tested?”

Mason let out a chuckle and then pointed to Bell.

“Get to work,”

Mason said.

Bell waved him off and flounced off in the direction Penny had gone.

He looked at me, and I held up my hands.

“I, too, will also get back to work, boss man.”

I pushed off the bar, and slipped back into the rhythm of the room. The lull had officially left the building; the place surged in waves with laughter at one table, a low boo at another when the Brewers stranded two on base, the took of cornhole bags in the back. Arlo ghosted past the dartboards with his arms folded; Oliver glowered amiably in the hall like a bouncer with a heart of gold.

I delivered two burgers, a basket of chili fries, and a lie to a man who insisted he’d ordered onion rings. He hadn’t. He accepted the fries when I promised to bring ranch. I passed the bar again just as Thorn tried to flip a shaker and almost beaned himself in the face. I laughed and kept moving.

Penny caught my eye from across the room and mimed road trip! with a steering wheel motion large enough to land an airplane. I widened my eyes and drew a line across my throat. Later. She pantomimed zipping her lips, then immediately unzipped them to talk to her table.

Bay shoulder-checked me as she went by, grin quick and feral.

“Mason’s going to pretend he hates the idea and then he’s going to make it happen.”

“Don’t give him credit yet,”

I said, but the truth was I knew he’d do it if he said he would.

At quarter past twelve, I wiped down the long table by the windows and caught sight of my reflection in the glass of tired eyes, flyaways escaping my ponytail, and a mustard smear on my wrist I didn’t know where it had come from.

We finished closing on muscle memory. Chairs flipped, mats rinsed, the register count whispered between Thorn and Mason like a ritual.

“Text when you get home,”

Penny ordered, back to bossy and safe.

“Only if you text me your packing list,”

I shot back, and her grin widened, wicked and bright.

Mason thumbed the bolt on the front door and did that final once-over that says good. He didn’t say goodnight. He didn’t have to.

I slipped my bag over my shoulder and turned toward the door. Mason’s voice found me before I took two steps.

“I’ll give you a ride home.”

I pivoted.

“Junior’s at the door. He can walk me to my car.”

“Your car’s still at the shop,”

he said.

“And I’m not letting you stand in the lot waiting on a miracle.”

I opened my mouth to argue and found… nothing. I had totally forgotten that my car was at the shop. “Fine,”

I said, even though it sounded a lot like yes.

Junior glanced at us as we walked out the door and nodded to Mason.

“I’ll lock up.”

We made our way over to his motorcycle and Mason held the helmet out to me.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I took it and felt my heart flip.

Mason

I was a fool.

Every time I thought I’d drawn a hard line, I went and erased it myself. First picking her up at the house, then taking the long way to the club, now giving her a ride home because I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else giving her a ride home.

I kept torturing myself, and I had no one to blame but me.

The engine thrummed under me, steady as a heartbeat, and the night opened wide around us. The streets of Weston were quiet. Most storefronts dark, and the stoplights blinking yellow in that tired rhythm small towns fall into after midnight.

We rolled up to a stop sign on the edge of town. That’s when she hollered in my ear, with her voice muffled through the helmet.

“Take the long way home!”

I turned my head just enough to catch her eyes. She was grinning. Carefree. God help me.

I should’ve told her no. Should’ve told her I needed to get her off my bike right now, drop her at her front door, and never put myself in this position again.

But the truth? That was the last thing I wanted.

Instead of turning right toward her house, I leaned the bike left and aimed us out past the edge of Weston.

The road narrowed, and fields stretched on both sides. Corn stalks lined up along the ditch and stars shined bright in the sky scattered around the moon.

Her arms were locked around my waist, firm and sure. Every shift of her body, and every press of her chest to my back when we leaned into a curve seared straight through me.

I couldn’t think about anything else. Not the rumble of the engine. Not the empty black ribbon of the road unspooling ahead. Just her. Always her.

We rode in silence for half an hour and looped through backroads I could ride blindfolded. Crickets filled the gaps, and every so often a barn light glowed in the distance like a beacon. She didn’t ask where we were going, and I didn’t tell her. I just let the night carry us.

When I finally turned back toward town, it was later than I realized. We rolled down her street with the little houses lined up neat, and their porches dark. Slayer wasn’t waiting on the steps tonight. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

I cut the engine in front of her house. The sudden silence was deafening after all that wind.

She swung her leg off, stood, and tugged the helmet free. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, messy from the ride, and her cheeks were flushed. She held the helmet out to me. “Here.”

“Keep it,”

I said, still gripping the bars.

“You’re gonna need it tomorrow when I pick you up.”

She froze for a second, and her lips parted like she wanted to argue, but then she nodded and hugged the helmet to her chest.

“Thank you for the ride, Mason.”

I dipped my chin once.

“You’re welcome, little dove.”

I thumbed the starter, the engine rumbling back to life. She stepped back, but I didn’t pull away.

“Get your ass in the house,”

I ordered.

Her mouth curled into a smile she tried to hide. She gave me a sassy salute, turned on her heel, and headed up the sidewalk. I watched her climb the porch steps, keys jingling. At the door, she glanced back over her shoulder. I was still sitting there.

She unlocked the door, disappeared inside, and the house went dark again. I waited a few beats, then eased the clutch and pulled away from the curb.

Back to the clubhouse. Back to my empty bed.

I’d finally gotten her off the bike, and what did I do? Told her I’d pick her up tomorrow.

Idiot. Glutton for punishment.

I couldn’t have Adley. But damned if I wasn’t doing everything I could to keep her close anyway.